A Downtown LA News Blog

Westgate Project’s Role in Pasadena as Urban Infill

The red circle is where a cross walk may be added to connect Central Park/Gold Line Station to the new residents at Westgate.

Like I said before, Westgate is one of the most important projects in Pasadena coming from a pedestrian perspective, which is all too often ignored in a metropolis dominated by the “driver mentality.” There’s nothing worse in an urban district, ostensibly built for pedestrians, than underutilized land (the area Westgate is on now).

One of the most exciting things I learned about Westgate is the attention to pedestrian linkages the project has for the community surrounding it. With the development adding new residents to the once empty land west of Central Park, it will finally be necessary to add a crosswalk in the middle of Fair Oaks Ave., allowing pedestrians access to Central Park and the Del Mar Gold Line metro station, and vice versa.

The point of all this is to expand the walkable area; In essence, expanding the urban playground for pedestrians starved for a larger place to walk freely. Will Central Park finally be used more often by people traversing through to get to Westgate?

Werk Paseo (named after the historic garage next to it) will link Green Street with Dayton Street creating an entirely new area of interest where pedestrians will be able to walk

The dynamic of Green Street will change dramatically with the introduction of new retail spaces, residents, and the Werk Paseo

Looking NW from Pasadena Ave. and Dayton Street, this gives an idea how much nicer and pedestrian friendly Pasadena Ave. will be after this project is completed

An updated image (6/16/09) of Westgate from the corner of Del Mar and Pasadena Ave. looking north

5 Comments

How is a development that is located right next to the freeway “pedestrian friendly”? Freeways are one of the worst consequences of car culture – there’s a high concentration of pollution & dirt (when you live near the freeway, you end up with black dust on everything from tire dust), speeding vehicles, noise at all hours of the night and day, including police vehicles that speed by and call out to people on their loud speakers and freeway construction noises all night long, just to name a few of the issues. You are asking people that specifically do not want to drive to deal with some of the worst consequences of driving in LA. I am all for a friendly pedestrian culture (I don’t own a car), but I think some very basic facts are being ignored and these facts can have a tremendous impact on quality of life and the health of individuals.

In my opinion, it is not inherently pedestrian unfriendly to be next to a freeway, esp. one that is below-grade like the 710, as opposed to an overpass overhead. Don’t get me wrong, freeways are the worst thing to have happened to LA. But in this case, it is better to have the freeway below-grade instead of above-grade like most of the 10 freeway.

What IS pedestrian unfriendly is underutilized land or space in an urban context such as Old Pasadena. Westgate is converting what was once “nothing” to much needed urban housing in Old Pasadena along with more retail space and parkland within the development.

A good example of a walkable environment is New York City, which is not only congested with cars/taxis, but have overpass expressways (like near Grand Central Terminal). It doesn’t make NYC pedestrian unfriendly because the concept of what makes an area walkable or not isn’t determined by that. It’s determined by how COMPACT the area is because human beings walk on average at about 3 miles per hour. Everything has to be shrunk down to the human level. In addition, you have to have a mix of uses as well as extensive mass transportation options.

Being COMPACT, MIXED-USE, DENSE, with an extensive MASS TRANSIT SYSTEM is the key to a pedestrian friendly area. The Westgate project adds to all of that, including the addition of more people who will be living close to the Gold Line Metro Station.